Peter Max & the Moon Landing
Some of us at New Jersey Stage
may not have been alive to see
it, but we were all watching the
plethora of televised specials cel-
ebrating the 50th anniversary of
the Apollo astronauts landing on
the moon on July 20th. It’s still
cool thinking that the second man
to walk on the moon (Buzz Aldrin)
was a Jersey boy.
One person who did watch the
moon landing live was artist Peter
Max. He was captivated with the
idea of space travel from a young
age, creating cosmic poster art to
commemorate the moon landing
in 1969. He created posters in his
‘60s cosmic- collage style to cele-
brate the event after the successful
mission and when the astronauts
returned home safely. He honored
the historic and heroic event again
on the 30th anniversary in 1999,
with his vibrantly colored paintings
NJ STAGE - ISSUE 61
and posters of Buzz Aldrin’s histor-
ic first walk on the moon and the
Apollo 11 blast off.
“From the time that a German sci-
entist told me when I was young
that the diameter of the sun was
about 100 times bigger than the
earth, I’ve been fascinated with
our universe and everything in it.
That made me start thinking about
all of the stars and how big they
were and our moon, and our place
in the universe,” said Peter Max.
“I wanted to express my new
understanding visually, and I
sketched images of planets with
strange suns, futuristic vistas, and
flying saucers hovering above
land,” Max added. “I went from
doodling futuristic cities in class
to conceiving of huge alien land-
scapes that, to me, were as real
as anything I could see or touch-
maybe more so.”
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